


What Oliver and Felicity Did That Summer (5x20 speculation fic)

by ChronicOlicity



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 5x20 Speculation Fic, 5x20 olicity flashback, Fluff, Olicity's summer in the bunker, but they talk about their issues too, inspired by the 5x20 speculation, s5 sizzle reel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 04:59:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicOlicity/pseuds/ChronicOlicity
Summary: Vodka. The Bunker. Oliver and Felicity. Salmon ladder challenge. Felicity can’t get back down again, and Oliver volunteers to help. Cue the moment from Crazy Stupid Love after the Dirty Dancing lift, and stuff happens.





	What Oliver and Felicity Did That Summer (5x20 speculation fic)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chireusette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chireusette/gifts).



> @oliversmoaked, you glorious perv. All the best ideas for fics come from you, I swear.

Felicity was not having the best of days. In the scope of things, and _scope of things_ in the context of Team Arrow always made it hard to complain about anything below a 7 on the Richter scale of human existence. Think eating bad sushi and feeling like her insides were about to kill her. That was a 0.5 on the scale, maybe less, depending on whether she managed to hydrate. Getting summarily dismissed from her job — otherwise known as being fired. At best a 2.

Which didn’t exactly help, because today of all days was when Felicity was feeling particularly _fired_. Exactly one year to the day — May 25, to be extra-exact — was when she’d become CEO of Palmer Technologies. Granted, that had gone hand in hand with the loss of an important friend, but since said friend was now alive and kicking and saving the time-space continuum, it was mainly the day that should have marked the one-year milestone of her being CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. A company she’d actually been passionate about, a company she’d poured all of herself into, a company she’d hoped she could have steered towards accomplishing amazing things.

Helping people with spinal cord injuries like hers, for starters. Closing the price gap between what was affordable and what was a pipe dream, a selective reality only for the insanely rich. That would have meant fight after fight with the board of directors — Mr Dennis in particular — but Felicity wouldn’t have cared. She’d spent a good chunk of her life fighting, watching others fight, and somehow it always felt like she was on the sidelines, the person with the backup sword when the first one broke, the person with the water bucket in case something caught on fire.

Fighting for something as worthwhile as helping people get on their feet again, literally, to turn impossible into reality via a self-sustaining bio-stimulant implant — that would have been Felicity’s fight, _hers_.

And since self-delusion didn’t go well with internal monologues, it wasn’t the only reason. Helping people with irreversible paralysis overcome their injuries would go towards evening the score with what she owed the universe. The karma log. Her conscience.

For Havenrock.

A few thousand people being able to use their limbs again didn’t even come close to the tens of thousands of lives she’d destroyed because of a few keystrokes. Damien Darhk may have launched the nuke, but Felicity had been the one to divert it to Havenrock. Out of all the cities, the oceans, the uninhabited and remote places she could have chosen, she’d been the one to play god. She’d been the one to kill all those people.

So when Felicity stepped inside the elevator that day, the secret one built to connect the underground bunker to Oliver’s now-defunct campaign office, suffice it to say that she wasn’t in the best of places. Not even close.

But Oliver didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t his job to know that, not anymore. They’d moved past that, and this — them — was whatever came after. Not an _us_. Not a _we_. Just…Oliver and Felicity. Two adults working on the smallish project of saving the city on a nightly basis.

That was what Felicity had to do now.

The elevator doors whooshed open to the vast space, an improbably high ceiling built underneath stories of cement, her workstation raised in the center of a platform in the round, lighting panels built into the walls that glowed green on a nightly basis.

And her ex-fiancé, who now lived here instead of the loft they’d once shared.

Which was totally, and completely fine.

“Hey,” Felicity said.

* * *

There were times — and Oliver was beginning to reach the stage of being able to admit it — when things didn’t feel like they were going well. At all. There were things to be optimistic about, of course. Work at the mayor’s office was progressing smoothly, for both himself and Thea, and the city had been quiet since the aftermath of Damien Darhk.

Which was precisely the problem.

_Quiet_.

Oliver had survived a deserted island on his own, spent most of his life since the Queen’s Gambit in isolation or at least working alone. But he’d let himself fall into the habit of having associates, then partners, then friends, a team, and now —

Absence was more keenly felt. Loneliness wasn’t as easy to brush off. Quiet felt like a reminder that he was missing something.

Oliver felt it would be a disrespect to call his new state of mind a bad habit, because of the people who’d made teamwork an indispensable part of his life, a light in the darkest of times, a reminder and baseline when his identity had felt its most elusive, the times when it felt like who Oliver Queen was could slip into shadow and never be found again.

Honesty was something he felt easier to face when he was by himself, and if Oliver was being honest, he missed Felicity. The summer they’d been away, the summer they’d traveled the world — it had been just the two of them, away from John, Thea, and Laurel. Now more than ever, Oliver was finding it hard to shake the incongruence, the _wrong_ ness of sitting alone in the Bunker with most of the team gone, when it should have been him and Felicity. Together. Actually together, not…whatever they were now.

In-between.

Not close, but not distant either. Not damn near enough to make it feel platonic. Normal.

But Oliver wasn’t going to protest the fact that they were trying, when the alternative was for Felicity to do what she’d done after returning the ring — for the last time. Leave. With the possibility that it might be for good.

No, Oliver would pay the price for what they had now, even if he couldn’t find a word for it. Nothing except for a feeling — an ache. A constant impulse to second-guess, to wonder _maybe_ …? Like a phantom limb, that when Felicity brushed her hair back from her eyes, that there had been a time he would have done it for her, and bent to steal a kiss — drawing a laugh that would have led to more. That after a night on the streets as the Green Arrow, she’d be helping him out of the suit, inspecting for injuries as she always did — not standing clear across the room, focused on a spread of busy screens.

These days it seemed like they were always meeting each other in passing, heading in opposite directions. One of them on the way out, the other just arriving. Vague answers to polite questions. Or talking with a barrier conveniently situated in the middle, either physical or self-imposed. Oliver couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to Felicity without a staircase or a chair between them.

But that was a price he still had to pay. The price of a lie that had backfired in the worst way he could have imagined. A lie that hurt her worse than he could forgive, especially for himself.

John’s favorite thing to say was _give it time_ , which was his implicit way of saying both: _you screwed up_ (that part was exclusively for Oliver) and _you two would have moved on by now if you were really serious about doing it_. He also suggested the contents of care packages Oliver sent on a monthly basis — care of the US Armed Forces — and asked subtle, carefully prying questions to ascertain what Oliver was doing with his life.

Or lack thereof.

It was Wednesday night, and Oliver already had a fresh tumbler ready, a bottle of John’s favorite Tennessee whiskey waiting to be poured. All that was left was for John to call. Their weekly session, two best friends making sure they didn’t fall out of touch and/or do anything insanely stupid, even for them.

Oliver had cancelled dinner plans with Thea once because of his weekly call with John and she’d said, not entirely humorously, that it was probably the only long-distance relationship Oliver Queen had ever been in that wouldn’t end in a restraining order and/or his car set on fire by a furious girlfriend. Then he’d thrown his pen across the desk at her, because forcing a Queen sibling to duck a projectile was really the only way to stop them from talking.

Anyway.

Oliver felt his phone buzz a little ahead of schedule.

John had texted: _Sorry, duty calls. Save whiskey for next time. Stay out of trouble._

Followed by a string of unintelligible symbols Oliver couldn’t read because he hadn’t updated his phone. He texted back: _No worries. Whiskey will keep, setting fire to car now_. Then he blew out his breath, picked up the bottle of whiskey and got to his feet to return it to the cabinet.

On the shelf above it was a bottle of vodka. More or less untouched, the label dusty. Oliver took it down, weighing it in his hand, and was still holding it when the elevator doors slid open without warning.

Felicity’s face tightened at the sight of him, but she smiled, close-lipped, the kind of wattage he associated with a light on its dimmest setting. Perfectly polite, but it made his grip tighten unconsciously around the bottle, another reminder of how things had changed.

“Hey,” he said.

* * *

Oliver and Russian vodka.

Two things that combined in the murky encyclopedia of knowledge Felicity had actively been repressing to form a single word: _bad_.

Well, _bad_ in their current situation. Their circumstantial marvel of human awkwardness. Because pre-breakup/engagement/fake wedding, Oliver and Russian vodka had combined to make some indescribable evenings. Happy ones. Pretty damn unforgettable, too.

Which was _precisely_ the problem.

Felicity pointed at the single glass he’d been about to put back, and the whiskey he should have been holding. “Trouble in paradise?” she said.

She’d made the joke without thinking, mistaking it for a conversation with Thea (who’d made the accurate observation that John and her brother were basically in a long-distance relationship) — where it was okay to joke about relationships and related subjects. Not in front of her ex-fiancé. _So_ not okay.

Whether Oliver noticed or not, she really couldn’t tell. His face read _neutral_ , and he shrugged. “Duty calls,” he said. “Couldn’t tell me what.”

“I’m sure he’s doing that so he doesn’t have to kill you,” she answered, too quickly to stop herself from slipping into banter. _Frack_.

Banter meant flirting. Flirting meant touching. Touching meant — _gah_. No.

Stop sign. Brakes. Roadblock. A cement fracking wall if she had to.

Felicity cleared her throat, taking a few more steps to put her out of the elevator zone. Not so many that it looked like she was trying to crab-walk past him to the workstation. But making sure there was a cabinet between them, and it was on the cabinet that she drummed her knuckles. “Hey, I’m sure he’ll reschedule,” she said. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a nice robbery to take your mind off it.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes slightly at her, in a way that meant he was trying to decide if she was teasing him (they used to love that game). “Speaking of taking my mind off things,” he said. “What about you? You’re early.”

Felicity checked the clock. Damn. He was right.

“Uh,” she said, nudging a piece of glass out from under the cabinet with the toe of her boot (weeks after the Bunker got trashed, and they were _still_ finding glass everywhere). “Rather not talk about it. Just wanted to work, clear my head. And since I’m unemployed, _work_ means here. Not Netflix and Chinese takeout.”

Oliver’s brow furrowed. “Is this about Palmer Tech?” he asked.

Felicity gave him a look. “Guess you missed that master class about what ‘rather not talk about it’ means, huh?”

“Sorry,” he said, hastily. “Just — it’s one year, right? Since you became CEO.”

Felicity was _not_ going to deflate. She was _not_ going to mope. And she was most unequivocally _not_ going to pour her heart out to Oliver Queen, of all people. Mostly because said heart was still in recovery, what with sutures, staples, and a pair of sturdy aluminum crutches.

And to be honest, she was pretty sure if Oliver got any closer, those aluminum crutches would end up doubling as a concussive stand-in for a baseball bat.

So no. For his sake, and hers.

“Okay,” Oliver said, but he also reached up and pulled another glass from the shelf, sliding it across the cabinet to her. “So how about we _not_ talk about it from our respective workstations?”

A part of Felicity was thinking _bad_.

But the other part of her was thinking, _I need a drink_.

They could hold their liquor. They were also responsible drinkers. Most importantly, there were chairs, tables, heck, even a flatscreen TV she could push in between them if things got too weird.

So Felicity picked up the glass and waited for Oliver to crack open the vodka. “Sounds like a good idea.”

* * *

Typing. Typing and silence. Silence and the occasional click of their glasses being put down. And typing.

Felicity was usually good at losing herself in coding, the tap-tap-tap of her fingers hitting keystrokes the equivalent of white noise, or a needlessly angsty song her younger Goth self would have blared on speaker just for the sake of murdering subtlety by a few more degrees.

But now she just sounded _loud_.

She reached for her glass and leaned back a little in her chair like she was stretching, chancing a look back at Oliver when she did. He was faced away from her, working on what looked like mayoral office stuff, spreadsheets and budgets and talking points to be hashed out in the daily press briefing.

He was writing notes with his right hand, and without pausing, he used his left to chafe behind his neck, classic sign that he was hitting a roadblock of some kind — either numerical or conceptual. Felicity resisted the urge to tug his hand away in her own, resisting even more the memory of all the times she’d surprised Oliver by putting her arms around him from behind, reading over his shoulder. Helping, usually. Distracting, after.

Was the Bunker usually this warm? Felicity rubbed her own neck self-consciously, using the backs of her hands to feel her face for signs of blushing. She was on her second-ish dose of vodka — maybe another would help her relax. Felicity nearly rolled all the way back in her chair when she tried to get up, misjudging the distance between her boots and the kick-off point, but thankfully Oliver’s back stayed turned.

The vodka was in the neutral zone, not in the middle of the platform on the floor —because that would be a needless trip hazard — but on one of the tables near the training area. Felicity was already there by the time she got down the steps, and she picked up the (now half-empty) bottle, sloshing the vodka around for absolutely no reason at all.

It was definitely cooler off the platform, and she took a fortifying sip (or two), lifting her hair off the back of her neck as she did. Oliver really _had_ been serious about not talking. Not a peep, not even a subtle test step of being friendly. Either the spreadsheets were genuinely _that_ absorbing, or he was giving her the space she’d asked for.

It was probably the vodka, but the thought didn’t make Felicity feel as pleased as it should have. Ordinarily. Soberly.

What happened? By this point, she’d have been laughing with Oliver about something completely stupid, the two of them sharing a glass either on purpose or accidentally, because they were too drunk — too happy —

Too in love to care.

Felicity looked down at her hands. Her ring finger twitched traitorously as soon as she did, reminding her that it was bare now, but hadn’t always been. That it used to have something she thought she’d wear for the rest of her life.

People weren’t supposed to get over that kind of breakup. They weren’t supposed to _see_ each other after that kind of breakup, assuming that most of said breakups involved concealed love children and a fundamental disintegration of trust. No biggie.

But they were still dancing around each other, and it was just — _wrong_.

_Hey, we should talk._

_Hey, there’s not enough vodka for that conversation._

_Hey, there’s not enough alcohol in the_ world _for that conversation_.

“Hey —” Felicity said, before she could stop herself, “we should vodka. _Conversation._ I mean, no, I didn’t mean that. I —”

_Talk_ , that was the verb she’d meant to blacklist. But Oliver was standing on the steps, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “What?” he said.

“Uh,” Felicity looked around for something to pretend about, and said the first thing her eyes landed on. “That. Uh — salmon ladder. I was saying, contest.”

“Contest,” Oliver repeated. “Between…?”

Ordinarily, Felicity should have used his confusion as a convenient brush-off, swept under the rug, embarrassing moment gone — no one the wiser. But he clearly didn’t think there was anyone _to_ have a contest with, which, excuse him. Felicity had a mean right hook. She’d picked up boxing. She’d kneed bad guys in the groin.

The salmon ladder could go… _jump up a stream_.

“Watch.” Felicity set her glass down with a decisive _clack_ , sloshing over some vodka in the process (oops). But she was on a roll, and she was striding determinedly across the room towards the training area, past dummies with holes in their heads from arrows, knives, _throwing-what-have-yous_ , weights she definitely wasn’t dumb enough to try heaving, until she got to the aforementioned salmon ladder.

Which — now that she was standing directly beneath it — looked a lot taller than she’d imagined. Felicity was very aware that Oliver was watching her, mostly out of concern, and pretended she’d just been looking for the bar.

“Found it,” she said, hefting it in her hands. She swung around — a little too fast — and immediately bashed it against the steel frame, making the whole thing reverberate like a bell, with a jolt that went all the way up her arm from wrist to shoulder. It was a non-human sound that encapsulated cringeworthy, but Felicity powered through. “I planned that. Just checking the…structural integrity.”

Oliver had put down his glass too, and was now standing at the edge of the training area. “Do you want me to show you how to do it?” he asked. “It’s good training for—”

“How hard could it be?” Felicity scoffed, while her memory cycled back to all those times she’d stood and watched from more or less where Oliver was standing at present, dismissed most of them for focusing too heavily on his shirtlessness and exposed muscles. Sara’s example, while still very much glossed over with admiration (that girl had a six-pack, for crying out loud), was a little more instructive, seeing as they were around the same height and weight.

Completely different athletic dispositions, but that was neither here nor there.

_Confidence_ , Felicity told herself, as she took a step back. With both her arms raised, the first bar was reachable if she hopped. It was reaching the one _above_ it she had to worry about. Simple physics. It was about momentum, about timing, vertical velocity and the right acceleration.

“.333 seconds,” she said under her breath.

“What?” Oliver said.

“Nothing.” She _definitely_ hadn’t just calculated how much time she needed to get between rungs, because that would just about surpass the embarrassment of what she was about to do.

_Screw it._ She had three vodkas in her, a hell of a lot of unemployment frustration, and a godawful personal life. She needed something stupid to take her mind off things, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of a _win_. So Felicity braced herself, took a deep breath, and _went_ for it.

Thank frack she hadn’t missed and gone flying face-first into the mat. The bar slapped onto the first metal notch and Felicity pulled for all she was worth, keeping to the ballpark mathematical value of time/speed she needed to raise her center of mass.

Which was physics-speak for _not make a total ass of herself in front of her ex_.

Second notch hit, _loud_ , and Felicity made a noise between a whoop and a triumphant laugh. Swinging made the world look a little blurred (or maybe that was the booze) but she could have sworn Oliver was smiling too. It stirred a feeling she didn’t have the time or will to analyze, so she kept on going.

Her arms were burning, and she could feel sweat on her back and underarms in a way _definitely_ uncomplimentary to the kind of shirt she was wearing, but she was on the fourth rung — which she’d missed the first time, necessitating a second ungainly lunge — when she stopped, letting herself hang.

“I think — that’s a sign — I should quit — while I’m ahead,” she said, between several deep breaths. “But I _told_ you. I — could — do it.”

She’d made the mistake of looking down, and once again, the ground looked a _lot_ further away when compared to the side of the salmon ladder she was used to standing on. Enough to trigger her phobia of high places, which — in hindsight — made her volunteering to attempt the salmon ladder even more of a stupid tipsy mistake than usual.

Oliver clearly thought she was setting up camp there until she made her point, and she heard him step hurriedly onto the mats. “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed you couldn’t.”

“Mm-hm.” Was it her imagination, or was she losing feeling in her right arm? “Told — you.”

Oliver waited. “So are you going to come down?” he asked. “You’re not supposed to hang there like that.”

_No duh_. “Yeah, planning on it,” she managed. “Just — one, tiny, insignificant — issue. How do I do that?”

Even in her precarious off-ground state, Oliver’s answer was enough to induce an eyeroll. “Do what you just did,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing. “But in reverse.”

Felicity’s palms were definitely starting to feel a little sweaty. “Can’t,” she said. “And I’m slipping.”

Her mind was going into slightly panicky overdrive. Had Curtis ever mentioned anything about the bio-implant in her spine being susceptible to landing hard on her back? What if she jostled it? What if it stopped working? What if —

“Hey,” Oliver’s voice was suddenly close by, like _really_ close by, and Felicity instinctively looked beneath her feet. He was standing directly beneath her. Vertically beneath her. At the kind of angle that meant he’d get both her boots in his face, the kind of story she was _sure_ the press corp covering the mayor’s office wanted to cover.

S&M, foot fetishes, the list of headlines was endless.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I was thinking _get a step ladder_ , not about breaking your nose.”

_Ish_.

“No, you won’t,” he said, patiently. “Let go. I’ll catch you.”

“Oliver.”

“Felicity.” Did he have to say her name like that?

Okay, she was losing sensation in her arms and an argument with Oliver without her usual plethora of persuasive techniques meant it could potentially go on until she fell, possibly damaging her spinal implant and/or committing a felony by assaulting the mayor of Starling City. So Felicity looked down, trying to keep her feet very still so she could gauge the precise place she’d need to fall to avoid both those consequences.

“Step half an inch back,” she said. “Half-step to your right. And lock your arms.”

Oliver did as she said. “Felicity, let go.”

Felicity shot one last glare at the ceiling. Either way, the night was going to end with her having looked like a complete and utter ass in front of her ex. She just hoped it could leave out a broken nose.

“One,” she said, counting. “Two. _Thr_ —”

The momentum of letting go cut her off before she could finish _three_ , and it was with her eyes squeezed shut that she fell — short, sharp — and landed waist-first into Oliver Queen. Which sounded incidentally more romantic than the reality, which was her breath leaving her upon impact in the form of a semi-cough (right in his face, thank you), and her legs hitting his chest with a muffled thud. His hands were on her waist, holding her half-suspended over his head, and she put both her hands on his shoulders as a signal that he could start putting her down.

For some reason, neither of them were saying a single word.

Oliver let her slide, which had no way for it except _against_ him, and Felicity felt every inch of it on the way down, her body flush against his. His arms were locked behind her back for safety, but there was no reason why she had to linger, why he was letting her, letting himself —

Felicity was nearly eye to eye with him when she stopped — and he stopped — and it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Which was another way of saying how suddenly aware they were, of multiple things, multiple good and bad things at once, happening at the same time, in the same place, without an inch of room in between to process.

What they’d been doing in the Foundry — keeping up this _thing_ — was a strategic approach based on space, lots of it. Without said space, Felicity could see every lash around Oliver’s very, very blue eyes. The specks of gray in his irises. The lines around his forehead and eyes that always deepened when he smiled.

His mouth.

_That_ _mouth_.

Oliver swallowed, his Adam’s apple shifting underneath the tendons and muscle in his throat, a detail her eyes couldn’t help but follow, like he was some kind of new machine that she was trying to puzzle out, parts and pieces working together in beautiful, inexplicable harmony.

But he wasn’t new. And he wasn’t a machine.

He was Oliver.

_Her_ Oliver, still. It was a selfish thought, unfair in the extreme, but Felicity couldn’t find any reason to think otherwise, not with Oliver looking at her the way he was, right at that very second. It was the kind of look that used to precede him swinging her up into his arms, carrying her to their bed. The kind of look for when she ran her hands up his sides, beneath his shirt, teasing him with her smile.

The kind of look that shouldn’t have been possible, because they were _over_. Done. A finished sentence and a closed book.

This was supposed to be a new chapter. A new median.

New things didn’t start with old habits.

“Oliver,” she said, conscious of how her hair was falling around her face, how he used to push it back from her face before they kissed, or let it spill around them — all the ways _he used to_ and _she used to_ right back. “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

* * *

“Oliver, I don’t think we should be doing this,” Felicity said, startling him from his thoughts. Thoughts he unequivocally was not meant to be having. About how her voice — the one she was using this exact moment — was the voice she used to whisper with, above him in bed, the sheets slipping around them. Laughing, a sound like dark honey. The equivalent of a kiss without one actually being given.

This was a thought Oliver wasn’t meant to be having.

_Right_ , he almost said. _You’re right. We’re bending the rules_.

But.

There was something incredibly _easy_ about the way she fit against his body, like his arms and chest still remembered how to accommodate her smaller frame, the way she liked to be held, even crushed — against him, when the moment called for it.

He could smell alcohol on her breath, and on his as well. But it was an excuse. Neither of them were nearly drunk enough to pretend they had no idea what they were doing. Felicity had just done physics calculations while hanging at a height above ten feet, all in her head, while he’d managed to drink a hell of a lot more than half a bottle of vodka while he was with the Bratva, all while staying in possession of his senses.

They were themselves, but the booze gave them enough leeway to pretend that enough had slipped away — inhibition, reason — to test the limit of the rules like they were doing now. Test, push, experiment with. Not break.

They weren’t going to break the rules. That was the line.

Falling and events subsequent to that had pushed the hem of Felicity’s shirt above the waistband of her jeans, just a little, but enough. More than enough. Without her glasses, he could see the dense fringe of lashes around her eyes, electric blue, the thing about her that always struck him in some deep place only she could reach. The way she looked at him. The way she used to. Oliver could see the beginnings of the dimple in her cheek, and he almost traced it with his fingertip, _nearly_. Then her lips, the lower lip he used to nip at with his teeth, just to feel her smile in response — a different smile each time, each one united by some ineffable quality — and her throat, soft and deliciously easy to tease, tracking kisses into her hair, from the base and back to her mouth again, sometimes — a lot of sometimes — on his way further down…

Goddammit, he missed her.

He missed this.

“Felicity,” he said. “I — we — should talk. About this. Us.”

“I don’t want to.” Her answer, her hands on either side of his neck, tantalizingly close to sliding up into his hair. Her eyes were almost hidden by her lashes; she was nearly whispering. Shivers on his skin. “Because once we talk…”

“…it’ll be over,” he said, using words from another time. Another place. Simpler.

Not better.

Never better than this. Them.

Felicity’s fingers twisted into his hair just as Oliver closed the space between them — distance, rules, all of it to hell — and they were kissing each other like they’d never been apart at all. It was the same as rising to the top of a pool and breaking the surface for a gasp of air. The same as a shower of sparks leaping into flame. The same as a sigh, a confessed secret, and things falling back to _rightness_.

But also wrong. They weren’t supposed to be doing this. Oliver knew it, as he pushed against Felicity’s mouth with his own, as lips parted and breaths were stolen and traded and snatched again, pain and longing condensed into a kiss that burned through any kind of awareness except that they were touching each other, holding each other, and there wasn’t a force in the world that was going to stop them from doing what came next.

Oliver shifted so that Felicity was more securely in his arms, feeling her knees press against his sides as if she could sense that he was about to start moving. They’d done this a thousand times before, same dance, different setting, but the only two things that mattered never changed.

_Them_. Still a _them_ , whatever was left of it, after all this time.

Oliver bumped his shoulder against a cabinet, into a corner that jabbed at his side in a way that should have hurt, but didn’t. Not enough to stop. They were pushed up against a pillar now, cool concrete underneath his hands. Felicity tugged at the bottom of his shirt, and Oliver ducked his head to help her. It fell at their feet, and she curved at the waist while he returned the favor for hers. Her hair spilled around her bare shoulders, around his hands, and Oliver ran them down the length of her back. The same bullet scar behind her shoulder blade, as familiar as a star in the sky, the newer one from where Damien Darhk’s gunmen had shot her, a wound that had changed their lives forever, and the new one, at the base of her spine, a line from when she’d had her surgery to help her walk again…

Felicity was distracted too. She followed old lines and old marks, tattoos and raised, healed knots of scar tissue, drinking them in the same way he’d relived the memories just by touching her skin again — what felt like a lifetime, a lifetime that hadn’t really begun, not really —

Then she was on her toes and pressing her lips to his again, her hands on either side of his head, and they were kissing each other, hungrily, whole-heartedly, when he backed towards one of the tables. It wasn’t empty; there were papers and tools cluttering the surface, and he swept his arm across to clear it. Pages scattered, metal echoed and small, unseen things rolled towards corners, but Oliver really couldn’t have cared any less. Felicity clambered up onto the table, their chests still flush against each other, betraying frantic heartbeats and even more frantic breaths.

The rest of their clothes landed on the floor alongside the general debris, and Oliver groaned at the same time Felicity arched, her nails scratching at his back, her breath sharp and fast in his ear. They each knew how the other moved, and it was almost unbelievable, the way they still remembered, like all the time and denial in the world couldn’t have erased something so simple and true.

The difference was the wanting. The thrill of remembering and the mindless abandon of giving in to it — memory, instinct — whatever it was called. Everything about them these days seemed to defy naming, and all Oliver knew was the power in not having to fight it, not anymore.

Just this once. At least this once —

It felt like they were finally being honest with each other, after months of unbearable distance. The rules had never worked — they were never going to work — and they’d broken them for good now.

Whatever happened next was anyone’s guess.

* * *

Felicity sat up. She was starting to get her breath back, but if she was being honest ( _honest_ , that word), what just happened felt like it was the kind of thing — session, exercise, _marathon_ , whatever — that came with a certain level of lightheadedness as a side effect on the side of the box.

Listen to her, what the hell was she saying? Thinking?

“This was a bad idea,” she said immediately. “ _Bad_ idea.”

Oliver was all sweaty, the kind of sweaty that entailed steam and heat and unbearable sexual tension, and Felicity was very careful to avoid looking at him when she started to pick up her clothes. His too, because while she was _around_ …it seemed rude not to.

Again, what the hell was she saying/thinking? She’d just done unspeakable things to/with him on top of a _table_ for crying out loud, and she was worrying about it seeming rude if she picked up her discarded-in-the-heat-of-moment clothes, but not his.

“Felicity,” he said, catching her wrist. “Just — stop — just for a bit, okay?”

She hesitated. “Don’t, okay?” she said, and there was an undercurrent in her voice that already screamed hurt. “We had the rules for a reason.”

“I know.” Oliver’s touch lingered, and Felicity almost stretched her fingers out to meet his — _no_ , just — no.

Felicity backed away, slipping her hand out of his without a word, and started to dress. Oliver didn’t say anything, but he took it as a cue, and neither one of them spoke until all items of clothing were on the appropriate body parts, and apart from the flushed faces, chafed skin and general mess around their feet from clearing a table in a rush, they might have just been talking.

Hah. Sure.

“This was a one-time thing,” Oliver said, and something in his tone seemed to turn it into a question.

A question Felicity answered in the affirmative. “Exactly. Once. And the moral of the story is that unspoken rules don’t work. It’s just us down here. We work together all the time, see each other every day — your bedroom’s _right_ there. We can’t just… _slip_.”

Oliver hesitated about something. “I know. It’s just…a part of me thought…”

_That it felt right. That we’re still right_.

“Oliver, no.” Felicity moved closer to the wall, because standing with her back to something made it feel like she wasn’t about to fall apart. She stared at her feet for a long moment, choosing her words. “You’re not imagining things, okay? We’re still… _whatever_ we are. For each other. I’m not blind, and I’m not going to lie that just now — it made me feel…safer than I have, in a long time.”

“But,” he prompted, gently. “It’s not the right time.”

“A little,” she admitted. “And regardless of how _good_ it feels, I remember why things with us broke apart the first time. You’re still that person, and I’m not sure if I’m the same — after — after Havenrock. I don’t think I could be, and until we figure out how to work through either of those things, getting back together — _doing this_ — it’ll just end up hurting more.”

Oliver looked exactly how she imagined he’d look. Which was…let down. Concerned. Wanting her to be okay with him being concerned. “But if we go back to what we were doing before, it means you’ll never talk to me about Havenrock, and I _want_ you to talk to me. I care about you, always have, always will — and I’m worried. I don’t want us to start keeping things from each other, and that’s what we’ll do if we pretend none of this ever happened.”

Felicity opened her mouth to respond to that last part, but he clearly wasn’t finished. “I realize the irony of me telling you that we shouldn’t keep things from each other, but how does this make sense?” he said. “It’s just going to put us back in a deadlock. Nothing changes, and I don’t want things to stay like this. I miss you — I miss how we used to be with each other. I’m sorry; I know keeping William from you was a mistake. I can’t say enough, and I’ll say it every day if you let me. I’m willing to work to get your trust back, but we can’t be in a system that’s based on a…a _firewall_ staying up between us.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Not because Oliver had missed the point. For someone with his moments of perfect obliviousness, he’d hit the nail on the head. The system didn’t work. Distance didn’t build trust, and Felicity _had_ been distancing herself because she was still wary of trying. If insanity was doing the same thing a thousand, a million times and expecting a different result, Felicity still had to convince herself that trusting Oliver — _that way_ — wasn’t insanity. He still had to convince her.

But like he’d said, it wasn’t possible with a few feet of wall between them at all times.

Felicity didn’t like late-night conundrums, but it was now or never. So she pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the table, inching further in so Oliver had room to sit too. No forced space this time. Just two people, sitting beside each other, talking through their issues.

“I know,” she said, finally. And she meant all of it. William, Havenrock, the deadlock, everything. “But you can’t fix my problems for me. That’s not who I am, and until then, until I process — _everything_ — inside my head, I can’t let you remind me how safe it’d feel if I let you try. I need to build something that can survive on its own — on _my_ own.”

Because what happened last time almost broke her apart, and she was tired of breaking. Of being the one to break.

“That doesn’t sound like me earning back your trust,” Oliver said frankly.

“It’s what I can live with, Oliver,” Felicity answered. “Can you accept that?”

“I’ll accept anything because it’s you,” he said, and nearly smiled. “You’re the genius, after all.”

Felicity nearly smiled too. “I think the rules should allow friendly banter. But not flirting.”

Oliver shifted, sitting up a little straighter as though he sensed they were about to get into the nitty-gritty of the rules, the real ones, codified and mutually agreed. “No,” he said. “No flirting.”

“Personal space, at all times,” she said.

“Six feet of distance.”

“No vodka without supervision.”

“I’ll lock up the bottle.”

Felicity laughed, leaning slightly into him as she did. It was a quieter kind of moment when she stayed there, and wound her arm around his, very nearly brushing a kiss against his skin. But she pressed her cheek to his shoulder instead. “I miss you too,” she said. “And it won’t be forever. I’m rooting for you, you know.”

“That’s all I want.” Oliver’s kiss at the top of her head, allowed only because it was this once. “Don’t give up on me.”

Felicity smiled, lingering for just a few seconds more, holding the last spell of intimacy, before she shifted away, carefully disengaging, letting him do the same. “Agreed?”

Their hands were on the table, side by side, not quite touching, but close enough to. If one of them only reached, just a little.

Oliver looked down, same as Felicity, and it was a long while before he nodded. “Agreed.”

They might have been apart, but Felicity had a feeling that maybe he was thinking the same thing. That someday, one of them — or both of them — would reach, close that space, and then —

_Anything_.

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely longer than what I planned for, but eh, it was fun. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
